The present invention relates to an apparatus for recognizing a lane on which a vehicle or other mover travels.
Various lane recognition apparatuses have been proposed in order to assist a driver to drive a vehicle along a lane or to automatically drive a vehicle. Japanese Patent Provisional Publication No. 8-5388 discloses a method for estimating a road shape using a least square method.
However, such a conventional method yet includes several problems to be improved in order to further accurately and stably estimate a road shape.
It is therefore an object of the present invention to provide an improved lane recognition apparatus which is capable of accurately estimating a road shape (a lane) while stably performing the estimation against disturbances.
An aspect of the present invention resides in a lane recognition apparatus which is for a vehicle and which comprises an image picking-up section, a lane-marker candidate-point detecting section and a road model parameter calculating section. The image picking-up section picks up a road image in front of the vehicle. The lane-marker candidate-point detecting section detects coordinate values of a plurality of lane marker candidate points from the road image. The road model parameter calculating section estimates a road model parameter representative of a road shape in front of the vehicle and a vehicle state quantity of the vehicle using an extended Kalman filter, on the basis of the coordinate values of the lane marker candidate points.
Another aspect of the present invention resides in a lane recognition apparatus which is for a vehicle and comprises a camera and a processor. The camera picks up a road image in front of the vehicle. The processor is coupled to the camera and is arranged to calculate coordinate values of a plurality of lane marker candidate points from the road image, to estimate a road model parameter representative of a road shape in front of the vehicle and a vehicle state quantity from an extended Kalman filter and the coordinate values of the lane marker candidate points.
A further another aspect of the present invention resides in a method for recognizing a lane in front of a vehicle. The method comprises a step for picking up a road image in front of the vehicle, a step for calculating coordinate values of a plurality of candidate points of a lane marker from the road image, and a step for estimating a road model parameter representative of a road shape in front of the vehicle and a vehicle state quantity from an extended Kalman filter and the coordinate values of the lane marker candidate points.
The other objects and features of this invention will become understood from the following description with reference to the accompanying drawings.